“Science is a social job.”
Tamar Kohn is an associate professor of Environmental Engineering in the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC) at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and an adjunct researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag). She studied Environmental Sciences at ETH Zürich, followed by a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University in the USA. After a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, she moved to EPFL in 2007, where she established the Environmental Chemistry Laboratory. She was promoted to associate professor in 2015.
As per March 10th, 2023, she has been promoted to full professor: read here.
Her main research focus lies in examining human viruses in natural and engineered systems. Her interdisciplinary team uses a combination of chemical, molecular biological, and modeling tools to investigate how various natural and engineered stressors act on viruses. Her long-term goal is to understand the fate of viruses after they are excreted from their hosts and to utilize this information to protect public health. Some of the most important contributions of Tamar Kohn’s work include her detailed studies on the mechanisms of action of different water disinfectants against viruses, as well as her demonstration that viruses can evolve to resist disinfectants and natural stressors. Besides waterborne viruses, her research also extends to airborne viruses. One of her recent discoveries, in collaboration with other Swiss research groups, shows that mild acidification of indoor air can reduce the viral load of influenza A virus and SARS-CoV-2 viruses in aerosol, and consequently their transmission, with profound implications for strategies to contain infections.
She holds several administrative roles as a member of the EPFL and Swiss research community and has obtained numerous research grants and awards. She is a member of the WHO expert panel on wastewater monitoring of SARS-CoV2 and of the WHO advisory board for the international scheme to evaluate household water treatment technologies. She became an associate editor of Environmental Science & Technology in 2021 and has served as the director of the EPFL doctoral program in Civil and Environmental Engineering since 2017. Adapted from Tamar Kohn -EPFL
Keywords: Environmental Chemistry, Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Environmental virology, Disinfection, Waterborne pathogens, Airborne viruses, Sanitation and hygiene
Lausanne – October 13th, 2022
How did you (decide to) become a scientist? I didn’t know from the beginning. Actually, I was more interested in languages and I also studied languages in high school. However, at some point, I noticed that I was most motivated to get up in the morning if I’d go to the lab and worked on science. That’s how I decided to pursue a scientific career.
What is your drive and excitement in science and in doing what you do now? What I enjoy most about what I currently do is working collaboratively with people from different domains because there is so much to learn from other people. I really enjoy this exchange with others, much more than working on my own on one little thing. What drives me is this interaction with others in different areas.
I work on viruses in the environment. Viruses were very much in the spotlight recently, but I have found them extremely fascinating even before. There’s not that much known about what happens to viruses once they leave their host, and there are not many people working on them either so there is a lot still to discover. It is a complex topic where we, step by step, try to better understand what causes these viruses to become inactivated and what helps them to persist. It’s just fun to learn things all the time. I think that it is a very relevant topic too. An important aspect of studying viruses is the potential to prevent diseases or people from being [sick and] miserable.
I do work on water treatment as well. In the laboratory, we have had some projects focused on low-tech water treatment options and on micropollutant removal. This [topic] is of course also very important. It’s a somewhat riper field though [compared to viruses], so my contribution to the field is part of a big piece. Also, these topics will become more and more relevant if we are going to be more people and less water.
Would you have one word to give as a gift to other women and more in general to young aspiring scientists, women or men? My main message is that science can really be a social job. It is often viewed as a solitary job, but it actually isn’t. I think it is a social endeavor and that this is maybe not the impression that people get from the outside
Science is my passion… in your mother tongue. Min Name isch Tamar Kohn und d Wüsseschaft isch mini Liideschaft
